“Life is chaos.”

That’s not a quote from a famous philosopher or movie star, though I’m sure someone, somewhere, has said it before. That was what my four-year-old son said to me for six months after we moved overseas to become expats. Chaos. Hardly the description you want to come to mind for your child when they’re talking about their life. Chaos. He’d just spent his first four years of life in the US then moved overseas with us, celebrating his fourth birthday the week we arrived.

We knew he’d survive. The chaos he was experiencing wasn’t chaos that made him unsafe or threatened his life; it was the internal chaos of having his entire life and world uprooted: new bed, new room, new house, new neighborhood, new city, new language, new food, new people, new country, new life. Everything was new, and as he looked at it, he saw not the stability of his family who were still with him, but the chaos of everything else that had changed.

How do you help your kids through the transitions and changes that naturally come as part of an expat’s life? I’m glad you asked. The suggestions below aren’t exhaustive, but they are helpful, expat-proven techniques that will help your kids find stability amidst all the transition and change they will inevitably experience.

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Why transition is hard for kids

This is quite normal for third-culture kids (TCKs)¹ who experience the change and transition of expat life more acutely than even their parents. Adults know that we’ll adjust to a new home, new city, and new food. We know that they’ll come to enjoy the new location, make new friends, love new restaurants, learn a new language, and more. We know that this expat experience can enrich their life. But kids just see chaos.

The chaos doesn’t necessarily end once you’ve been in a new place for a while. When we traveled to my passport country, the US, to see friends and family after nearly five years away, my kids not only experienced horrendous jet lag, but they experienced all this chaos once again. Several of my kids had never been to the US; one left when he was two (and remembered nothing), and only one remembered the US. Reintroduce the chaos: new bed, new room, new house, new neighborhood, new city, new food, new people, new country… it’s a new life, yet again.

So, how do we help our kids through these times of transition? How do we give them stability that stays the same, no matter where in the world we go? How can we help our kids feel safe, even as the entire world around them seems to change?

Glad you asked. I don’t have exhaustive answers—no one can—but here are some helpful, expat-proven techniques that you can use to help your kids find stability amidst transition and change.

1. Make your marriage rock-solid

That’s right, the number one tip to help your kids find stability amidst change is to make sure that your marriage is rock-solid.² The last thing children in transition need is to wonder if their parents will divorce or if they still love each other. Remember, for most TCKs, their parents and siblings are the only things that are truly stable, that go with them anywhere in the world. Divorce, or fear of divorce, is already devastating to children’s sense of well-being; imagine what it would be for a TCK.

So, even though you adults are going through transition yourselves—and, actually, because you’re going through transition yourselves—make sure to keep your marriage a priority. Give each other grace in the challenges of 12+ hour flights, days of airport food, and hotel hopping. Keep short accounts. Have the conversations you need to have. Find a way to have a date, even if it’s with kids in tow. Don’t let your marriage or your love for one another be something your kids believe is subject to change.

2. Don’t call your house your “home”

It’s natural to call “home” the place that you’re living, especially if you have the privilege of staying in one spot for a long time. Unfortunately for expats, you can never count on a specific house being your home for long. Between job changes, visa needs, bad landlords, and even just trips to your passport country to visit family, you won’t be in that house forever. Don’t call it home, as there are guaranteed times that it won’t be. TCKs need a stable “home” identity that moves as they move, and it’s not a house.

What makes up your home? As much as you can, think and speak of “home” as where your family is. Even if we’re staying in a hotel for just one night, we call that “home” because our whole family will be there. No matter what happens to a house or how long we’re in a location, we will always have a home. Our home is wherever we are together.

3. Establish unchanging routines

As much as kids love adventure, they also need stable routines, especially in times of transition. So, intentionally think through what routines your kids have on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis—and then keep those routines sacrosanct wherever you are in the world. When everything around kids is changing, a stable routine helps them know that they are safe, that their family is strong, and that they’ll be okay.

Daily routines

At least part of the day can and should be predictable and stable for your kids. Perhaps you always eat breakfast together as a family, or you always have pancakes and eggs, or everyone eats whatever they want by themselves as the family wakes up. Whatever it is, keep that rhythm wherever you go in the world. A start of the day that feels the same anywhere in the world is a start of a day that feels safe and stable to a child.

For us, our breakfast pattern changes too much to be a stable rhythm. Instead, we put stability in our evening bedtime ritual. We get the kids ready for bed (PJs, brush & floss), I read them a Bible story, and then I sing bedtime songs that are the same every night. When I am out of town or traveling, I’ll call in to read a story or record it in advance so that the routine is the same, even when I’m away.

No matter where we are in the world, we can follow that same pattern—even on airplanes. When everything is “new” to our kids, at least one thing will be the same: the daily routine of how they go to bed.

What are the rhythms, patterns, or routines that you can follow every day, anywhere in the world? Make sure that they are transferable anywhere you are in the world; if the pattern relies on some special feature of your house or some local dish, then you won’t be able to transfer it. Then, just at the point where the kids need the stability of the routine, you won’t be able to follow it.

So follow The Airplane Test. If you can keep the routine on an international plane ride, you’ve gotten it right.

Weekly routines

Routines that are rock-solid aren’t just for each day; they can—and should—also be routines that happen each week. For example, as much as I wish we could have an entire-family-together dinner every day of the week, it’s impossible since I teach night classes multiple times a week. But Sunday dinner is a time for our entire family to eat together. With rare exceptions, if it’s Sunday dinner, everyone will be there, and we’ll eat together. It gives a stable rhythm, no matter where we are in the world.

It may not be Sunday dinner for you. Maybe your family has Taco Tuesday, or movie night Friday, or goes to synagogue on Saturday, or does a family hike on Sunday, or… you get the idea. What are the patterns of each week that you can follow anywhere you are in the world?

Make sure to choose something that you can take with you wherever you are in the world. But also be open to letting a little local distinctiveness influence the pattern. Another of our family traditions is pizza and movie night once a week. As we’ve traveled the world, sometimes we’re reduced to watching a movie on an iPad that definitely wasn’t made for six people to crowd around it, but we can always do a movie.

Pizza, likewise, is quite different around the world, and different pizza experiences make it a special tradition. Our kids fondly remember the time they had a 50-inch pizza; they remember the time we tried a local pizza that was, uh, lacking in the flavor department (spinach and egg as a topping? Really?), and they’ve experienced homemade pizza, delivery pizza, frozen pizza, and our host country’s no-tomato-sauce-and-covered-in-fried-shrimp “pizza.” It’s not always great or yummy, but it’s always pizza and we’re building memories in the unique flavor pizza takes as we travel the world.

What weekly traditions does your family have or can you create that will travel the world with you?

4. Stabilize some possessions

Young kids haven’t developed abstract thinking and thus think very concretely. While older kids know that ‘tomorrow’ isn’t that long to wait, younger kids have no concept of what it means. The same concrete thinking applies to children when they’re in transition. The fact that they have a new bed, new sheets, a new pillow, or a new pillowcase may be unnerving to them because it represents the totality of their concrete world that has changed.

So, wisely and selectively, choose some possessions to always travel with you. Wisely and selectively because it needs to be easily transportable: you can’t take the Millennium Falcon Lego set around the world, but you can take Emmet with you, no matter where you go. You can even take pictures of Emmet all over the world, as a friend of mine did, building a fun adventure into your stable possession.

For my kids, we had each kid pick out a special pillowcase, and as we travel, we put that pillowcase on top of whatever pillow they’re using, including airplane pillows. Each has a nighttime stuffed animal or blanket, too, that they’ve grown attached to, and those travel with us as well. It’s a bit of stability to have a dearly beloved possession with them, no matter where they are.

A word of warning, though: make sure not to lose these possessions. The last thing you want is for this point of stability to be lost. That happened to us once with a Beanie Baby, and only through herculean efforts were we able to replace it with an identical one.³ Maybe even secretly buy redundant items so that, if one is lost, you can “find” it again.

When kids are older, it’s probably not a stuffed animal, but it may become a special collection from around the world. Our older kids have started enjoying collecting refrigerator magnets from all the countries we visit. Some of you collect coffee mugs, or key chains, or stamps, or patches, or whatever. Let these collections travel the world with you and become part of the story of your life—some things are different, but some are always the same. Just start collecting wisely: it’s easier to transport 100 stamps around the world than 100 coffee mugs.

What are some possessions that are special to your kids which can travel the world as a stable possession?

5. Celebrate your traditions

One of the beauties of expat life is that you get to pick and choose what traditions you’ll follow from your own culture, and add to them traditions from other cultures. The best traditions are often quirky, unique to just your family, but they are beautiful for the time-honored place that they have in your family. What holidays will you follow, and how? What life events will you celebrate, and how? What seasonal markers will be a cause of celebration? Make the traditions of your passport country and host country your own, special to your family, and celebrate them all over the world.

What makes a tradition most special—and most stabilizing to your kids—is the way you make it uniquely yours. Our kids always sit in the “crack” of the couch when it’s their birthday. Quirky, stupid, and yet fun. And, no matter where we are in the world, we can find some kind of crack for the birthday kid to sit in. What can you do to make a tradition uniquely yours?

And make sure, however you celebrate the tradition, that at least part of it—ideally the most important part—can travel with you. Our Christmas celebration starts the day after Thanksgiving and involves opening an ornament every day that tells the Christmas story. We can’t take our Christmas tree with us all over the world, but we will take those ornaments—and we chose ornaments that were small so that they could travel with us. Those ornaments have become special in other ways, as family members and grandparents have contributed ornaments to our story. I can’t travel the world with my grandmother’s prized table, but I can travel with her tiny glass angel.

What traditions can you make unique to your family and travel the world with?

6. Talk about the good and bad

One of the loneliest experiences TCKs in transition can have is feeling chaos without anyone to talk to. Just like making sure your marriage is solid amidst the stress of transition, proactively talk with your kids about what they’re experiencing. Whatever they’re feeling, empathize with them and help them process the emotion. After not seeing your parents in five years, you may not want to take time away from them to talk with your child who was scared to give them a hug, but your absence at that time can make them feel like the world is closing in around them.

Do the hard work and talk with your kids. Talk with them not just about what is exciting, but about what is hard. And keep in mind that what is exciting to you may be exactly what is challenging to them.

In our home, we talk about our “yays” and “yucks” at the dinner table. What was a “yay” today and what was a “yuck”? Sometimes the yay is big and sometimes the yuck is big, but there is alway at least one yay and one yuck to talk about. Make this a normal pattern of your life, not just when you’re in transition, so that talking about these things in transition becomes expected and normal. You will be there for your kids, and talking about the good and bad will become another family routine that brings stability to your children all over the world.

Conclusion

Life in transition may still be chaos.They’ll still experience a new bed, new room, new house, new neighborhood, new city, new language, new food, new people, and a new country. But, hopefully, amidst all of the new, they’ll experience a lot of the same: the same parents who love them, the same “home” where their family is, the same daily routines, the same family patterns each week, the same pillowcase or stuffed animal or treasured possession, the same traditions, the same conversations about good and bad experiences.

While you can’t eliminate all the new things that are scary for your children, you can ensure that the core, the most important parts of their identity, remain the same the world over. And that will create bits of predictable calm for your children when life is chaos.

Footnotes

1. So named because kids of expats, immigrants, or multi-cultural marriages grow up with neither their parents’ culture (culture #1) nor their host culture (culture #2), but a third culture that is a blend of their parents’ culture and their host culture. ↩︎
2. I know that some expats with kids are single parents. I don’t want to exclude or ignore you, but I don’t have personal experience with single-parent expat life, so I won’t attempt to give “equivalent” advice here. If you are a single expat parent, though, please let us know in the comments what you do! ↩︎
3. We asked a group of Beanie Baby enthusiasts what was the name of the one we lost, found the same Beanie Baby on eBay, paid too much for it, and then found a total random stranger to bring it with him into our host country. I’ll be forever indebted to that kind man. ↩︎